In the modern era, world wars and countless other major conflicts have changed the employment of the militaries beyond recognition to their ancient participants. Empires have come and gone; states have grown and declined. Enormous social changes have been wrought, and military power continues to dominate international relations. The role of the military today is as central to global societies as it ever was.

Etymology and definitions

The first recorded use of military in English, spelled militarie, was in 1585. It comes from the Latin militaris (from Latin miles meaning "soldier") but is of uncertain etymology, one suggestion being derived from *mil-it- - going in a body or mass The word is now identified as denoting someone that is skilled in use of weapons, or engaged in military service or in warfare.

As a noun the military usually refers generally to a country's armed forces or sometimes, more specifically, to the senior officers who command them. In general it refers to the physicality of armed forces, their personnel, equipment, and physical space they occupy.

As an adjective military originally applied only to soldiers and soldiering, but it soon broadened to apply to land forces in general and anything to do with their profession. The names of both the Royal Military Academy (1741) and United States Military Academy (1802) reflect this. However, at about the time of Napoleonic wars "military" begun to be applied to armed forces as a whole and in the 21st century expressions like "military service", "military intelligence" and "military history" reflect this broader meaning. As such, it now connotes any activity performed by the military personnel.

Military history

Military history is often considered to be the history of all conflicts, not just the history of the state militaries. It differs somewhat from the history of war with military history focusing on the people and institutions of war-making while the history of war focuses on the evolution of war itself in the face of changing technology, governments, and geography.
Military history has a number of purposes. One main purpose is to learn from past accomplishments and mistakes so as to more effectively wage war in the future. Another is to create a sense of military tradition which is used to create cohesive military forces. Still another may be to learn to prevent wars more effectively.
Human knowledge about the military is largely based on recorded and oral history of military conflicts, their participating armies and navies, and more recently air forces. There are two types of military history, although almost all texts have elements of both: descriptive history that serves to chronicle conflicts without offering any statements about the causes, nature of conduct, the ending and effects of a conflict; and analytical history that seeks to offer statements about the causes, nature, ending and aftermath of conflicts as a means of deriving knowledge and understanding of conflicts as a whole, and prevent repetition of mistakes in future, to suggest better concepts or methods in employing forces, or to advocate need new technology.

The Military

Every nation in the history of humanity had different needs for military forces. How these needs are determined, forms the basis of their composition, equipment and use of facilities. It also determines what military does in terms of peacetime and wartime activities. All militaries, whether large or small, are military organizations that must perform certain functions and fulfil certain roles to qualify for being designated as such. If they fail to do so, they may become known as paramilitary, civil defence, militia or other which are not military. These commonalities of the state's military define them.

Military command
The first requirement of the military is to establish it as a force with a capability to execute national Knee policy. Invariably, although the policy may be created by policy makers or Policy analyst, its implementation requires specific expert knowledge of how military functions and how it fulfils roles. The first of these skills is the ability to create a cohesive force capable of acting on policy as and when required, and therefore the first function of the military is to provide military command. One of the roles of military command is to translate policy into concrete missions and tasks, and to express them in terms understood by subordinates, generally called orders. Military command make effective and efficient military organisation possible through delegation of authority which encompass organisational structures as large as military districts or military zones, and as small as platoons. The command element of the military is often a strong influence on the organisational culture of the forces.

Military finance
Having military intelligence representatives participate in the execution of the national defence policy is important because it becomes the first respondent and commentator on the policy expected strategic goal compared to the realities of identified threats. When the intelligence reporting is compared to the policy, it becomes possible for the national leadership to think about allocating resources over an above the officers and their subordinates military pay and the expense of maintaining military facilities and military support services for them. The process of allocating resources is conducted by determining a military budget which is administered by a military finance organisation within the military. Military procurement is then authorised to purchase or contract provision of goods and services to the military, whether in peacetime at a permanent base or in a combat zone from local population.

Development of military doctrine is perhaps the more important of all capability development activities because it determines how military forces were, and are used in conflicts, the concepts and methods used by the command to employ appropriately military skilled, armed and equipped personnel in achievement of the tangible goals and objectives of the war, campaign, battle, engagement, action or a duel. The line between strategy and tactics is not easily blurred, although deciding which is being discussed had sometimes been a matter of personal judgement by some commentators, and military historians. The use of forces at the level of organisation between strategic and tactical is called operational mobility.

The operational level is at a scale bigger than one where line of sight and the time of day are important, and smaller than the strategic level, where production and politics are considerations. Formations are of the operational level if they are able to conduct operations on their own, and are of sufficient size to be directly handled or have a significant impact at the strategic level. This concept was pioneered by the German army prior to and during the Second World War. At this level planning and duration of activities takes from one week to a month, and are executed by Field Armies and Army Corps and their naval and air equivalents.

Military tactics concerns itself with the methods for engaging and defeating an enemy in direct combat. Military tactics are usually used by units over hours or days, and are focused on the specific, close proximity tasks and objectives of squads, companys, battalions, regiments, brigades and divisions and their naval and air equivalents.

strategy forms the plan of the War, and to this end it links together the series of acts which are to lead to the final decision, that is to say, it makes the plans for the separate campaigns and regulates the combats to be fought in each.

Military technology

As with any occupation, since the ancient times the military has been distinguished from other members of the society by their tools, the military weapons and military equipment used in combat. When Stone Age humans first took a sliver of flint to tip the spear, it was the first example of applying technology to improve the weapon. Since then, the advances made by human societies and that of weapons has been irretrievably linked. Stone weapons gave way to Bronze Age weapons, and later the Iron Age weapons. With each technological change was realised some tangible increase in military capability through greater effectiveness of a sharper edge in defeating leather armour, improved density of materials used in manufacture of weapons. On land the first really significant technological advance in warfare was the development of the ranged weapons and notably the sling. The next significant advance came with the domestication of the horses and mastering of horse riding. Arguably the greatest invention that affected not just the military, but all society, after adoption of fire, was the wheel, and its use in the construction of the chariot. There were no advances in military technology until, from the mechanical arm action of a slinger, the Greeks and Romans development the siege engines, and the bow was manufactured in increasingly larger and more powerful versions to increase both the weapon range and armour penetration performance. These proved particularly useful during the age of chivalry, with knights, mounted on destriers and encased in ever-more sophisticated armour, dominating the battlefield. Somewhat earlier in China, gunpowder had been invented, and was increasingly used by the military in combat. The use of gunpowder in the early vase-like mortars in Europe, and advanced versions of the long bow and cross bow, which all had armour-piercing arrowheads, that put an end to the dominance of the armoured knight. After the long bow, which required great skill and strength to use, the next most significant technological advance was the musket, which could be used effectively with little training. In time the successors to muskets and cannon, in the form of rifles and artillery, would become core battlefield technology.

During World War I the need to break the deadlock of the trenches saw the rapid development of many new technologies, particularly the tanks and military aviation. Military aviation was extensively used, and particularly the bombers during the World War II, which marked the most frantic period of weapons development in history. Many new designs and concepts were used in combat, and all existing technologies were improved between 1939 and 1945. During the war significant advances were made in military communications through use of radio, military intelligence through use of the radar, and in military medicine through use of penicillin, while in the air the missile, jet aircraft and helicopters were seen for the first time. Perhaps the most infamous of all military technologies was the creation of the atomic bomb, although the effects of radiation were unknown until the early 1950s. Far greater use of military vehicles had finally eliminated the cavalry from the military force structure.

After World War II, with the onset of the Cold War, the constant technological development of new weapons was institutionalized as participants engaged in a constant arms race in capability development. This constant state of weapons development continues into the present, and remains a constant drain on national resources, which some blame on the military-industrial complex. The most significant technological developments that influenced combat have been the guided missiles which are used by all Services. More recently, information technology, and its use in surveillance, including space-based reconnaissance systems, have played an increasing role in military operations. The impact of information warfare that focuses on attacking command communication systems, and military databases has been coupled with the new development in military technology has been the use of robotic systems in intelligence combat, both in hardware and software applications.

War, as violence, can be distinguished into war between states, and civil war, in which case class struggle is, according to antimilitarists theorists, a primordial component. Hence, Marx's influence on antimilitarist doctrine was not surprising, although making Marx accountable for the antimilitarist tradition is and large overstatement. The belief in the eternal antimilitarist spirit, present in all places and time, is however a myth because the modern military as an institution is a historic achievement formed during the 18th and 19th centuries, as a by-product of the modern nation-states. Napoleon's invention of conscription is a fundamental progress in the organization of state armies. Later, Prussian militarism would be exposed by 19th century social theorists.

Stereotypes of the military

A military brat is a colloquial term for a child with at least one parent who served as a regular in the armed forces. Children of armed forces members may move around to different military bases or international postings, which gives them an unusual childhood. Unlike common usage of the term brat, when it is used in this context, it is not necessarily a derogatory term.

Although some groups engaged in combat, such as resistance movements, all refer to themselves using military terminology, notably "Army" or "Front", none have had the structure of a national military to justify the reference, and usually have had to rely on support of outside national militaries.

Militaria

Militaria are another way of depicting the military. Militaria are antiqueartifacts or replicas of military history people, firearms, swords, badges, etc collected for their historical significance. Today, the collecting of militaria items such as toy soldiers, tin soldiers, military models is an established hobby among many groups of people.